the hare with amber eyes

“I’d think, as the construction lights on the cranes came on at dusk, stretching deeper and deeper into Tokyo Bay, that I was becoming a sort of amanuensis and that I should probably record what he said about Vienna before the First World War, sit at his elbow with a notebook. I never did. It seemed formal and inappropriate. It also seemed greedy: that’s a good rich story. I’ll have that. Anyway, I liked the way that repetition wears things smooth, and there was something of the river stone to Iggie’s stories.”